Abattoir buyer can be found: State government

An axed worker from an abattoir in south-west New South Wales says he and hundreds of others will struggle to make ends meet after the meatworks closed suddenly on Tuesday.

The 250 workers at Burrangong Meat Processors in Young have been told they will not be paid last week's wages or entitlements.

Workers met liquidators yesterday afternoon, where they were told the company does not have the money to pay any entitlements.

Brett Robinson, who moved from Bourke to Young to work at the abattoir, says he and others will struggle to make loan repayments.

"[We] bought a house here and just had a little baby, it's not real good finding out this news and we have got a house to pay off and a mortgage and ... loans that you owe the bank," he said.

"We come in ... we just got no work all of a sudden, they say there's just no work.

"It's a shock, there's hurt, so many words that you can't even imagine."

The receiver of Burrangong Meat Processors, Alan Hayes, says the Federal Government's General Employees Entitlements and Redundancy Scheme (GEERS) will underwrite almost all entitlements.

Mr Hayes says it covers all except the important area of superannuation.

"Well it is and we'll be working ourselves on efforts to recover stock, as much money as we can get from stock and debtors, and the employees do get a priority for unpaid wages and superannuation out of stock and debtors," he said.

The federal Member for Hume and Liberal MP Alby Schultz says when he was a meatworker, you just had to find other work.

But he says the GEERS scheme set up after the Cowra abattoir collapse is comprehensive, including intensive job search help.

"It's up to three months unpaid wages for the period prior to the appointment of the insolvency practitioner, unpaid annual leave, unpaid long service leave, up to a maximum of five weeks unpaid payment in lieu of notice and up to a maximum of 16 weeks unpaid redundancy entitlements," he said.

"It's up to the superannuation fund as to what entitlements they can get."

But Mr Schultz is sceptical about the chances of a quick sale of Burrangong Meats.

He says finding a buyer will not be easy.

"Some meatworks have significantly downsized their staff because we've been through a very difficult drought, things have become unviable for many of them, so it's a combination of many, many things and I don't think there's too many people interested in buying abattoirs at the moment. Hopefully that's not the case," he said.

Deal off

The abattoir owner, Grant Edmonds, says as recently as Monday he had believed Chinese interests would buy the plant but the deal is off.

He says the financial woes are due to several factors.

"We were building a power plant from our methane gas, we spent about $4 million on that and we just weren't able to get it online and that was going to save us about a million dollars a year. Also expensive stock prices and unable to trade into profit the last few months," he said.

Hope for workers

The State Government says it is confident a buyer can be found for the abattoir.

The Regional Development Minister, Ian Macdonald, has met the owner of the Burrangong Meatworks this morning to discuss what options are available to the company and its 300 staff.

The Member for Burrinjuck, Katrina Hodgkinson, says she has asked the Minister to explore all avenues to keep the business operating.

She is worried not all entitlements are covered, including superannuation.

"So we'll keep working towards some resolution to that, obviously if entitlements don't come forward that is an extremely unsatisfactory situation."

Mr Macdonald says while the abattoir should be an attractive asset to any potential buyer, the main priority at the moment is the welfare of its staff.

"I believe that it will be sold in the not too distant future," he said.

"However, the interests of the workforce are very important to us at this moment so we've put a taskforce in there to assist them through this period."